1. Tesla share price to drop significantly

The Tesla Roadster 1 – yes it’s lovely. What will 2018 have in store for the car company? Photo credit: randychiu.

Each quarter, Tesla’s costs keep increasing by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Its profit margin keeps slipping further into the red.

Other companies, both traditional and new entrants, will catch up to Tesla in 2018.

Finally, 2017 was generally a good financial year, and if consumer confidence drops in 2018, people will buy fewer cars. There’s also the debt pile-up in the US car loans industry. Total auto loans in the US have increased 70% in the last 7 years to $1.17 trillion – and much of it is subprime, with some buyers opting for 7(!!) year loans (think about the value of the car at the end of 7 years).

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Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.

Finance

The Spanish Bank, BBVA, approached its latest mobile app in a totally different way. They reduced the size of the team to 15 and incorporated Design Thinking (for more information about Design Thinking, read this excellent article from the UK Design Council). The results have been very impressive:

Technology

Warning: fake WhatsApp apps started appearing this week

It’s been a shameful week for security with two large public scams. The first was a fake WhatsApp app appeared in the Google Play store. It would have taken a very keen eye to spot any problem with the fake app. And the second scam was fake supermarket vouchers being distributed among WhatsApp users. The problem with the voucher was that it took users to a landing page which asked for personal details. Continue reading Weekly news round up 9 November 2017→

Please share this post with your contacts because it makes me feel better.

Please share this post with your contacts because it makes me feel better.

Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.

Strange, but creative. Still strange though

Conor Nickerson, from Canada, has spent a lot of time and effort adding himself into his own childhood photos. He’s pasted himself, as an adult, next to the original himself, as a child. He’s achieved some great results. You wouldn’t have even noticed the editing without knowing beforehand. It’s a good, creative marketing trick, and I hope he got some business from this. I hope it doesn’t become a trend. https://www.boredpanda.com/guy-photoshopping-childhood-photos-conor-nickerson/

Cars

Got Netflix and Spotify? Buy another subscription service from Porsche.

Porsche in Atlanta has launched a new subscription model for their range of cars. For $2,000 a month, you can get access to a range of Porsche cars each month. And as with all good Internet subscription models, there’s a Premium version that gives you access to more cars including some GTS models. Continue reading Weekly new round up 26 October 2017→

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I was kindly invited to an event today called “The Ad Apocalypse And The Rise Of Interactive Brand Experiences”, hosted by wayin. Wayin runs a content management system for brands to run interactive campaigns in their digital advertising.

Although the event proved how wayin was the answer to several of life’s challenges, there were a few interesting thought leadership pieces at the event which I’ve tried to capture below.

My apologies for brevity in the notes format and any spelling mistakes.

Wayin introduction, Richard Jones (Wayin CEO)

Richard started by describing how Mondelez has pulled £100M from their advertising recently due to the lack of impact that their digital advertising spending is having. They’ve never pulled ad spend before the holiday season. Continue reading The future of digital advertising→

Please share this post with your contacts because it makes me feel better.

Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.

Banking

Let’s start with some good news! ING ran a trial of contactless charity donation boxes. The trial resulted in average donations doubling old-fashioned cash collection tins. I think the new donation box design could be improved, but it still encourages generosity to charities. bit.ly/2ykXaMC.

Apple is close to launching their person to person payments service. It’s purely proprietary – which means only Apple users will be able to send and receive payments. I predict Apple Pay Cash will have a bigger cash stockpile this time next year than many high street banks. This is because users will keep their received cash on their device, simply because it will be easier than transferring it into a bank account. https://t.co/agcKxKigJxContinue reading Weekly interesting news round up→

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Last night was the latest InsTech London event. InsTech, or InsureTech or InsurTech (pleasecan someone confirm the standard nomenclature?) applies to the insurance industry in the way that FinTech was the industry disruption in the financial industry.